The HESTIA project was born from our pupils’ questions about the social situation around the world, with wars happening to specific places and migration waves observed towards the European countries. Our schools include immigrant pupils, nearby schools include refugees, and it is our belief that the educational systems must be reformed towards being more inclusive with socially vulnerable populations. HESTIA’s main objectives are to: • provide a preparation to our schools in order to respond to migrants’ inclusion • raise awareness of the challenges faced by immigrants and refugees • contribute to the development of policy and good practice exchange regarding migrants’ inclusion. The project is coordinated by the 6th Primary School of Egaleo, Greece, a suburb of Athens near the refugee hosting structures. The partnership is completed with Maastricht Graduate School of Governance from the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands and 4 primary schools: GO! Basisschool Schaarbeek Hendrik Conscience in Brussels Belgium, Istituto Comprensivo Statale “Gianni Rodari” in Palagiano Italy, Associação Jardim Escola João de Deus in Leiria Portugal, and Maristes Sants Les Corts Fundació Champagnat in Barcelona Spain. The schools involved are large, primary schools (some with kindergarten and secondary schools attached), most of which include pupils facing a variety of difficulties (cultural, economical, educational and social). The Maastricht Graduate School of Governance has been selected in the partnership due to its teaching programs in migration studies, and for having years on research and trainings on migration-related issues. The project activities include: a. 5 collaborative activities implemented by the pupils with the aid of internet tools b. 45 implementation activities around the following 4 themes: Human Rights, Defining Migration, Migration Stories, Inclusive Exchanges in Culture and Sports c. 6 dissemination activities, and common dissemination products (website, Facebook page, leaflet, poster, newsletter, e-magazine, HESTIA activity book, press releases, radio/tv broadcasts). HESTIA project is designed to develop our pupils’ 21st century skills: -personal skills (knowledge construction, creativity, critical thinking, problem-solving, digital competences, learning to learn) -interpersonal skills (communication, collaboration, negotiation, social competences) -life skills (citizenship, career preparation, resilience, and tolerance). Our focus is especially on the 4C’s, communication, collaboration, critical thinking and creativity, but also on tolerance and citizenship as we believe are crucial for the project objectives. The HESTIA activities are based on the project-based learning methodology; group work and collaboration among pupils will be constant; outputs will be presented by the pupils and shared with their peers in the partner schools; experiential workshops will take place for pupils. The sharing of good practices among partner schools throughout the course of the project is essential to its successful completion. Use of Twinspace platform, web2.0 and other ICT tools will facilitate the activity implementation, pupils’ collaboration and communication. The CLIL methodology will also be applied whenever possible. Important results expected from the project include a change in the educational agenda regarding school inclusion for refugee children. By delivering our proposals to educational authorities and policy makers, we will try to achieve the inclusion of refugee pupils in regular classes. Also, another result will be the operation of a network in the partner countries to exchange good practices among education professionals and human rights organisations concerning the support of migrants in our schools. The successful operation of the network and the wide spreading and acceptance of our proposals manifesto will have a significant impact on how our communities and our schools deal with migrant children. The expected results targeting the direct participants of the project (pupils, teachers) include attitude changes towards a more tolerant and receptive behaviour, a development in their emotional intelligence skills, an enhancement of their 4C’s skills, an improvement of their ICT and foreign language skills. Especially for the teachers, the empowerment of their intercultural competences through training will be an important result that will impact on the work taking place in our schools, changing our everyday practices and creating an inclusive atmosphere for all. It is also expected to observe parents' attitude changes towards migrants after participating in the activities, thus widening the project impact to the local community. The potential longer term benefits envisaged from our project are forming receptive communities with tolerant and open-minded citizens, promoting the values of solidarity and respect, creating inclusive schools for all pupils.
The HESTIA project was created out of the need to build an inclusive atmosphere in our schools for all children. We wanted to train our teachers on how to deal with pupils having a migrant background and teach our pupils the values of empathy, tolerance and acceptance towards the others. Some of the partner schools already had a background on emotional intelligence projects; some others had already dealt with inclusion issues due to necessity. The Maastricht University Graduate School of Governance was the ideal partner to train the partner schools on migration and inclusive education. The objectives we set for this project were: -to provide a preparation to the partner schools in order to respond to migrant pupils inclusion -to raise awareness of the challenges faced by immigrants and refugees, and -to contribute to the development of policy and good practice exchange regarding inclusion of the migrant population. Apart from Maastricht University, the partnership consisted of 3 primary schools in Greece (6th Primary School of Egaleo-Athens, which was the coordinating school), Spain (Maristes Sants Les Corts Fundació Champagnat-Barcelona) and Belgium (GO! Basisschool Schaarbeek Hendrik Conscience-Brussels), 1 kindergarten-primary school in Portugal (Jardim-Escola João de Deus-Leiria), 1 primary-secondary school in Italy (Istituto Comprensivo Statale “Gianni Rodari”-Palagiano), who implemented the project activities in all educational levels. 40 pupils of the higher primary grades participated in the 3 pupil exchanges and 14 school teachers and head teachers in the short-term staff training program in Maastricht. Our work focused on the following themes: human rights, defining migration, migration stories, inclusive exchanges in culture and sports. The partner schools implemented 56 educational activities in class, 5 of which involved collaborative work among the schools. A survey was carried out in the beginning of the project and was repeated near its end, in order to record the attitudes and perceptions of teachers, pupils and their parents towards migration, and measure if there was any clear change that could be attributed to the project work. Also, our partnership created a set of proposals for inclusive education (project manifesto), which was delivered to the educational authorities at the local level in each partner country, and to a representative of the European Commissioner of Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship, during the meeting in Brussels. The HESTIA description of activities and outcomes are uploaded on the Twinspace platform (https://twinspace.etwinning.net/44331/pages/page/269036); photographs and dissemination materials can be found on the project website (https://kavafisschool.wixsite.com/hestia). Trying to assess the project outcomes, we believe that HESTIA had a strong impact on the school communities as a whole. At every partner school, it is noticed that everyone is more aware about Human and Children’s Rights, immigrants and refugees, and also about cultural diversity, behaving with empathy towards migrants and everyone in need. It confirmed the choices of our partnership, whose work was based on the following steps: 1. designing awareness-raising activities, 2. providing information about migration to learners, 3. developing empathy among the participants, and 4. resulting in learning. And even though the results of the survey are not conclusive, they are encouraging with regards to the reception and potential of projects like HESTIA. Although the sample was limited, there were a number of indicators from the survey data that suggest a modest change in attitudes and perspectives. Apart from the impact mentioned above, project work resulted in: the exchange of good practices among education professionals from the partner countries and their empowerment, especially through the teacher training LTTA provided by Maastricht University; the development of the pupils communication, collaboration, emotional intelligence, and foreign language skills; the networking with local associations and NGOs to open the schools to the local communities; the promotion of our manifesto proposals to the educational authorities in the partner schools areas, in an attempt to change the way our schools deal with migrant pupils. The longer-term benefits of our project can be summarized at the following points: 1. The school communities have become more receptive and open to all pupils. 2. Local educational authorities will promote our project practices and embody them into more inclusive educational policies.